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About the author

John Marble

John Marble grew up on a terribly conventional ranch with a large family where each kid had their own tractor. Surviving that, he now owns a small grazing and marketing operation that focuses on producing value through managed grazing. He oversees a diverse ranching operation, renting and owning cattle and grasslands while managing timber, wildlife habitat and human relationships. His multi-species approach includes meat goats, pointing dogs and barn cats. He has a life-long interest in ecology, trying to understand how plants, animals, soils and humans fit together. John spends his late-night hours working on fiction, writing about worlds much less strange than this one.

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2 Comments

1. Jess Jackson JR says:

   October 10, 2017 at 11:06 am

   Same Here Chip and John. NRCS pays something around half of the cost of putting in fences, watering systems, interseeding to improve pastures, brush management and many other things that benefit ranches to increase the speed of adoption.

   I do not understand why ranchers don’t want to double profit by increasing biomass to benefit cattle, wildlife, ecosystem services such as clean runoff and much more.

   I DO NOT want this to become a regulatory issue like confinements. Here’s the rub. Every civilization that has lost its topsoil ceased to exist almost immediately. Farmers have the biggest burden but ranchers need to do our part too.

2. Chip Hines says:

   October 10, 2017 at 8:09 am

   John is correct on the slow adoption to managed grazing. Unfortunately, I have no solution other than to just keep plugging away, one producer at a time. We’re up against human nature, which to date, no one has figured out.